Latitudinarian
Template:For Template:Short description Template:More citations needed Latitudinarians, also called latitude men, were initially a group of 17th-century English theologiansTemplate:Sndclerics and academicsTemplate:Sndfrom the University of Cambridge who were moderate Anglicans (members of the Church of England). In particular, they believed that adhering to very specific doctrines, liturgical practices, and church organizational forms, as did the Puritans, was not necessary and could be harmful: "The sense that one had special instructions from God made individuals less amenable to moderation and compromise, or to reason itself."<ref name="Landsman">Template:Cite book</ref> Thus, the latitudinarians supported a broad-based (sensu lato, with "laxitude") Protestantism. They were later referred to as broad church (see also Inclusivism).
Examples of the latitudinarian philosophy underlying the theology were found among the Cambridge Platonists and Sir Thomas Browne in his Religio Medici. Additionally, the term latitudinarian has been applied to ministers of the Scottish Episcopal Church who were educated at the Episcopal-sympathizing universities at Aberdeen and [[St Andrews University|StTemplate:NbspAndrews]], and who broadly subscribed to the beliefs of their moderate Anglican English counterparts.<ref name="Landsman" />
Latitudinarianism should not be confused with ecumenical movements, which seek to draw all Christian churches together and not necessarily to de-emphasize practical doctrine. The term latitudinarian has taken on a more general meaning, indicating a personal philosophy that includes tolerance of other views, particularly, but not necessarily, on religious matters.
In the Catholic Church, latitudinarianism was condemned in the 19th-century document Quanta cura and the Syllabus of Errors. Pope Pius IX taught that, with its emphasis on the freedom to discard traditional Christian doctrines and dogmas, latitudinarianism threatened to undermine the church.
Original meaning
The latitudinarian Anglicans of the 17thTemplate:Nbspcentury built on Richard Hooker's position in Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Hooker (1554–1600) argues that what God cares about is the moral state of the individual soul. Aspects such as church leadership are "things indifferent". However, the latitudinarians took a position far beyond Hooker's own and extended it to doctrinal matters.
As a positive position, the latitudinarian view held that human reason, when combined with the Holy Spirit, is a sufficient guide for the determination of truth in doctrinal contests; therefore, legal and doctrinal rulings that constrain reason and the freedom of the believer were neither necessary nor beneficial. At the time, their position was referred to as an aspect of low church (in contrast to the high church position). Later, the latitudinarian position was called broad church.Template:Citation needed
While always officially opposed by the Anglican church, the latitudinarian philosophy was, nevertheless, dominant in 18th-century England. Because of the Hanoverian reluctance <ref>George I was actually born in the Germanic state of Brunswick-Luneberg, the capital of which was Hanover. He was the Elector of Hanover until his accession to the British throne in 1714 at the age of 54. Because he was not a member of the Church of England, when he arrived, and despite becoming its head, his lack of knowledge and experience would have limited his authority to intervene in fact, if not in law.</ref> to act in church affairs, and the various groups of the religious debates being balanced against one another, the dioceses became tolerant of variation in local practice. Furthermore, after George I of Great Britain dismissed the Convocation, there was very little internal Church power to either sanction or approve.Template:Citation needed
Thus, with no Archbishop of Canterbury officially adopting it, latitudinarianism was the operative philosophy of the English church in the 18th century. For the 18th-century English church in the United States (which would become the Episcopal Church after the American Revolution), someTemplate:Who are of the opinion that latitudinarianism was the only practical course because the nationTemplate:What had official pluralism, diversity of opinion, and diffusion of clerical power.Template:Why